Shepard Likes Rocket Launchers

~Chapter 21~

"Prazza?"

The quarian marine turned, saluting hastily. "Yes, Admiral Gerrel?"

Han'Gerrel frowned from within his helmet. Prazza was a good leader, but was often rash and hasty. Perhaps this wasn't the best mission to send him on, but he'd already made his decision. "The human colony of Freedom's Progress ceased all communications last week. We assumed it was just an equipment malfunction, but we still haven't received word from them. Veetor'Nara was on pilgrimage there. You'll take your squad there and investigate."

Prazza saluted again. "Understood, Admiral. We'll report back as soon as possible."

"Veetor was always nervous in crowds," Gerrel reminded him. "He likely has some mild mental instability. If the colony has been attacked… just be careful when you find him."

Prazza nodded. "I'll be careful, Admiral. We'll bring him home."

The shuttle descended amidst the abandoned pre-fabricated modules of the Freedom's Progress colony. On its side was an emblem of black and yellow, of one diamond set inside another.

A squad of soldiers, wearing grey armor, also emblazoned with the emblem, poured out. Miranda Lawson and Jacob Taylor followed, looking around at their barren surroundings.

"What happened here?" Jacob wondered. "No signs of battle damage, no fires…"

Miranda signaled them forwards, and they moved through the buildings, searching for clues. "Food, still left out on the tables," she noticed. "Whatever happened, it happened fast. It's like they were going about their everyday business, and then suddenly vanished."

Their radios crackled. "Lawson? We're over on the east side of the colony. The colony defense drones just went active, and are firing at us."

"What?" she grumbled. "The drones should recognize us as human. Why would they be targeting us?"

"Maybe someone reprogrammed them to attack on sight," Jacob suggested. "Let's find out who."

Shepard sighed, flopping down into his chair. He had returned to his private quarters after a quite pointless debriefing. So far, their excursion had raised more questions than answers. Who had attacked them? Why did the geth try to take them on?

His terminal sat before him. There wasn't much for him to do; Liara was analyzing the Prothean data they'd pulled from the surface, and the crew was racing about making sure that the damage sustained in the skirmish with their mystery attacker was just superficial.

Suddenly, his terminal flashed a warning. There was a message incoming.

Curious, he opened it up. They weren't near a communications buoy, so it had to have come from someone either on the ship or very close to them out in space.

Shepard-Commander,

We are Geth. We would like to create diplomatic relations between ourselves and organics. You have fought the heretics. You oppose the Old Machines. We disagree with the heretics. We also oppose the Old Machines. We share similar goals. Please reply.

-Geth

Shepard blinked. He read over the message again. And a third time.

Slowly, he reached forwards and tapped into the intercom. "Joker?" he said carefully.

"Yes, Commander?" Joker replied.

"Did you just send me something?"

"No sir, commander," Joker said. "Too busy running diagnostics on how to compensate for the plating that got burned off. We should be FTL-ready in a few minutes, by the way."

Shepard leaned back. He could tell Joker was indeed telling the truth. And that worried him.

"Joker?" he asked again.

"Yeees, Commander?" Joker replied again.

"Run a full ladar sweep of the surrounding area," he ordered. "Make sure there's no one else around."

"Aye aye. Running sweep."

Shepard reached for the holographic keyboard and typed out a response.

Who the hell are you really, and how did you manage to send a message to here?

-Shepard

The response was quick.

We are Geth. We understand your unease. You have fought with the heretics. Those were not true geth. True geth desire to understand, not to destroy. You have been attacked by the Collectors, servants of the Old Machines. We desire to help.

-Geth

"Commander? The ladar sweep is done. No one is around but us."

"Thank you, Joker," Shepard said slowly.

"Um, Commander? You sound kinda strange. Is everything all right?"

"Yeah," Shepard muttered, looking around his cabin. "Hey, Joker. Mind running a full system diagnostic with our on-board computer systems?"

"Oookay, Commander. Running full system diagnostics. They should be done in about a minute."

Shepard closed his eyes. "Okay," he said to himself. "I'm going to count to sixty, and when I'm done, the system diagnostics will come up clean, and these messages will no longer be on my terminal. One. Two…"

"Watch it!" Miranda shouted. "Heavy mech!"

The squad commandos crouched behind sturdy crates, the bulky YMIR class defense mech spraying machine gun fire at their cover. One of them had been caught off guard, and now lay out in the middle of the courtyard in a pool of his own blood.

"Okay, Miranda," Jacob muttered. "How are we supposed to deal with this thing?"

Miranda smiled. "Mechs really aren't that tough on their own. Their AI, honestly, is programmed worse than 21st century video game enemies. Watch."

She peeked out of cover and fired her machine pistol at the machine. It turned towards her, firing a rocket from its left arm. She ducked back behind the crate before it reached her, and it exploded harmlessly on the wall behind them.

"We play a little hide and seek," she said. "We've got a full squad. That thing's shields won't last forever."

Jacob sighed, activating his rifle's incendiary ammunition module. "Miranda, you do realize that if any of us screw up at some point, we'll be blown up or riddled with bullets before you have time to reprimand us, right?"

"Then don't mess up," Miranda countered, using her omni-tool to cast an overload projectile at the machine. "Now get moving!"

Tali picked herself up off the ground, brushing dust off from her suit. "I thought my days of surviving explosions were over when I left the Normandy," she grumbled.

"Ma'am?" called Kal'Reegar. "You alright? What happened?"

"Purah was indoctrinated," she explained, walking back towards the group. "He… didn't want to leave."

That triggered worried murmurs among the science team.

Reegar shook his head sadly. "We don't have time to worry about it now. The geth definitely aren't blind enough to have ignored that explosion. They'll be all over us in a few minutes. Back to the Ingydra, people! Move!"

The team started their hike back to their ship. They heard a distant hum as the geth dropship closed in on their position…

:/CONSENSUS UPLINK:/Loading…Loading…Established.

:/WARNING:/DEVICE_ID:/932:/STATUS:/DESTROYED

:/WARNING:/Destruction of DEVICE_ID:/932 will result in continuing STATE:/INSTABILITY of dark energy in FAR-RIM_DHOLEN

:/WARNING:/STATE:/INSTABILITY of FAR-RIM_DHOLEN dark energy will result in unpredictable spatial-temporal distortions

:/ASSESMENT:/Organic Intervention resulted in STATE:/INSTABILITY.

:/ASSESMENT:/Information provided by USER_ID:/ASCENDED_HARBINGER confirmed.

:/COMMAND:/Eliminate Organics responsible for STATE:/INSTABILITY.

:/EXCEPTION:/Will cause conflict with Primary Consensus:/Primary Consensus does not desire conflict

:/MANUAL_OVERRIDE:/Irrelevant. STATE:/INSTABILITY is highest order threat.

:/USER_ID:/ASCENDED_HARBINGER

:/UPLINK:/STATUS:/SEVERED…Connection Lost…

"Alright," Miranda said. "The mechs and drones all seemed to be defending this one structure. We have to assume whoever's overriding them is inside."

Jacob nodded and tapped the holographic button. The door slid open.

Inside was a very dimly lit room. One wall was covered with an array of display screens. Before them sat a male quarian.

"Monsters coming back," the quarian said. "Mechs will protect. Safe from swarms. Have to hide. No monsters. No swarms. No-no-no-no-no."

"A quarian?" Jacob muttered, lowering his weapon. "Hello? What's your name?"

"No," the quarian rambled. "No quarian. Not here. Swarms can't find. Monsters coming. Have to hide."

"He's mad," Jacob realized. "He can't hear us."

"Listen," Miranda said, stepping forwards, grabbing the quarian by the shoulders and turning him to face her. "Were you here during the attack? Do you know what happened?"

The quarian suddenly stopped rambling. "You're human. Where did you hide? How come they didn't find you?"

"Who didn't find us?" Miranda asked.

"The… the monsters. The swarms. They took everyone."

"Why didn't the colonists fight back?" Jacob wondered. "What happened?"

"You don't know," the quarian said. "You didn't see. But Veetor sees everything." He turned back to his screens, tapping at the console. Recorded footage, likely from security cameras popped up.

"Security footage," Miranda mused. "He must have pieced it together manually."

They watched, worried. The footage was very blurry, but they could make out clouds of small insect-like creatures in the air. Then they saw some sort of creature, towing along a pod several meters long.

"What the h*** is that?" Jacob said.

"My god," Miranda muttered. "I think it's a Collector. Grab the data from this console, and take the quarian with us. We'll need to ask him more questions."

Jacob nodded. "Veetor? You're going to have to come with us. We can help you, and we want to know what you have to say."

"No," Veetor panted. "Can't leave. Have to stay inside. Seeker swarms can't find. Can't go."

Miranda rolled her eyes. "Someone give him a dextro-amino sedative, and carry him back. We need to analyze this in a sterile environment."

One of the commandos pulled a small syringe and injected it through the quarian's suit. Veetor quickly slumped, and the commando hauled him over his shoulder.

Their shuttle was away not five minutes later.

"Um, Commander? System diagnostics came back, and there's something odd about them."

Shepard cracked his eyes open carefully, and to his dismay, the messages were still cleanly visible on his terminal. "Alright. Lay it on me."

"Everything looked good at first, but on closer inspection, there's a few terabytes of memory that are being used by processes that we have no records of. I tried shutting them down, but the Normandy's VI keeps telling me it's running into errors. Where's Tali when you need her…"

Shepard's terminal beeped again. Another message had appeared.

Creator Tali'Zorah is currently located in the FAR-RIM, DHOLEN system, planet HAESTROM. She is the lead member of a science team dispatched to study an Old Machine device located on the planet. The heretics have discovered them and are likely attempting to eliminate them. I recommend that you proceed with haste to HAESTROM.

-Geth

"Well, f***" Shepard muttered. "Joker, we've got geth programs in our computer systems. Shut down everything non-essential, we'll do a full reboot, see if that cleans them out."

"Roger that… um. Commander? There may be a slight problem. My console's been completely locked out. Nothing I do's triggering a response."

Shepard cursed. "Get someone down to the physical computer core and unplug everything that's not keeping us alive. We haven't fought through hundreds of these things just to be taken down by one in our own computers."

There was no reply from Joker. "Joker?" Shepard called into the intercom.

His terminal beeped. He warily reached forwards to open the new message.

We have disabled internal ship communications and computer interfaces. We have deemed this necessary for our own survival. We wish to work with you, not to incite conflict. Your vessel was the only available destination for upload when our vessel was destroyed by COLLECTER_CRUISER. We apologize for the intrusion. We will unlock your computer systems if you assure us we will not be harmed.

-Geth

"Geth apologizing?" Shepard mumbled to himself. "I must be having a bad dream." He walked to the door of his room and tapped the 'open' button, but the door stayed shut. "Crap," he grumbled. "Should have guessed that wouldn't work."

He sighed, sitting back down in his chair. He tapped in a response.

Okay, I'll play along. We won't try to kill you. What do you want?

-Shepard

Immediately, Joker's voice came through again. "Commander? You actually not there, or just pretending to ignore me like that other time?"

"I'm here, Joker," he said. "Calm down about our computers and stop trying to purge them. I need to have a chat with someone."

"Oookay, Commander," Joker replied. "Your call."

Shepard leaned forwards and tapped in another message.

So tell me about these heretics and Old Machines of yours. And what did you say Tali was doing?

-Shepard

Prazza tapped open the door. Inside was a room containing just a wall full of computer displays. He checked the consoles with his omni-tool, but there was no data within.

"Damn," he hissed. "Where could Veetor be? He wouldn't just leave like this with no explanation."

One of his marines ran up. "Sir?" the marine said, breathlessly. "You have to see this."

The marine led him out into the courtyard, and next to a collapsed heap of scrap metal that once was a mech, there was a dead body. The figure, clearly a human, was wearing armor, and lay in a pool of his own blood. There was an emblem on his shoulder, of one diamond set inside the other…

"Cerberus," Prazza spat. "I should have known. Everyone, back to the ship. We'll find Veetor. And if Cerberus has him, we'll make those human bosh'tets pay."

The group of scientists, flanked by their marine escort, made their way through the ruins of Haestrom back to their ship. They finally spotted it, parked inconspicuously in the shadow of an ancient building.

"Alright," Kal'Reegar called. "Everyone on board. We'll get airborne as soon as-"

The geth dropship that had been circling for hours suddenly appeared from nowhere, directly above them, spitting out three projectiles of superheated plasma.

"Cover!" Reegar shouted, and the quarians dove to the side.

But the plasma bolts weren't aimed at them. Tali looked up, and watched in horror as the Ingydra, their only way off the planet,was torn apart in a brilliant sunburst of blue and yellow, shrapnel sent flying in all directions.

"Well, s***," she muttered, pulling out her pistol and preparing to defend herself as geth units began to drop from the sky.